Jordan England-Nelson

Staff Writer

Recent articles

Business

Santa Monica and Venice Beach have made headlines for being at the epicenter of Southern California’s booming tech industry, now commonly referred to as Silicon Beach.But as rents on the Westside soar, tech companies large and small are starting to look south for larger offices in Playa Vista, a planned community on the site of the former Hughes Aircraft campus.In January, Yahoo announced that it will move its Santa Monica headquarters and 400 employees into a new office...

Social media

If Don Draper worked in today’s world, he would have an account on Instagram. And on Vine, Whisper, Snapchat and any other social media platform that dominates the attention of young people, the world’s future consumers.The best advertisers don’t get sentimental about the tactile experience of the printed page or the delicate scratch of the record player’s needle. If people spend their time listening to the radio or driving past billboards, advertisers will...

Social media

Melissa Clark first realized her eighth-grade daughter was a celebrity the day they arrived at her new school in Santa Clarita, and students surrounded her car and begged her daughter to take pictures with them.The next day at school, she was “literally mobbed by about 200 people,” Clark said from her home in Burbank. “An administrator had to walk her from class to class.”Three years later, Clark’s daughter — who has a makeup tutorial...

Grocery store operators

Fresh & Easy has announced plans to sell off 30 of its Southern California stores and develop a new business model for its remaining outlets as it positions the company for growth.The El Segundo-based grocery chain plans to shutter 50 stores across California, Nevada and Arizona, or about 30 percent of its 167 stores, the company confirmed Monday.The under-performing stores are offering 50 percent discounts on merchandise to help clear out inventories before a planned April...

Internet services

“I love it because it’s free money,” Cathy Okawa said from her home in Sherman Oaks.The stay-at-home mom and family finance blogger was talking about Swagbucks, a coupon rewards site that millions of people visit each month to shop for deals, watch videos, play games and fill out surveys. The site — whose parent company Prodege is based in El Segundo — rewards users with points, called...

Aviation safety and security

Los Angeles International Airport is about to embark on a $250 million construction project that will require one of its four runways to be closed on a rotating basis over the next four years, which could lead to some flight delays.Starting Friday, crews will begin work on the first runway — 25L on the south side of the airfield — to increase the size of the safety areas at both ends of the runway. The areas serve as buffer zones in case planes overshoot a landing or...

Space launch industry

Google is helping SpaceX bring high-speed Internet to the masses with a constellation of small satellites.SpaceX announced Tuesday that Google and Fidelity have invested $1 billion in the Hawthorne-based rocket maker, giving it a 10 percent stake in the company.In an interview last...

Real Estate

The first time Brent Howell saw an enclosed shopping mall, as an off-duty Coast Guardsman in Portland in 1964, he knew he wanted to get into real estate.“It was like a city,” he recalled while sitting in his office in El Segundo. “You could be entertained and eat and shop at the same time. It was a unique concept.”Fifty years after landing his first real-estate job, Howell is now the executive vice president of CBRE, the world’s largest...

Aviation accidents and incidents

A Delta Air Lines plane made an emergency landing at Los Angeles International Airport on Tuesday after experiencing mechanical issues shortly after takeoff, an airport official said.The Boeing 757 aircraft landed safely at LAX about an hour after taking off from the airport at 8:39 a.m., Los Angeles World Airports spokeswoman Amanda Parsons said.The plane circled over the ocean to burn off fuel for a safer landing. Delta Flight 2116, carrying 146 passengers and six crew...

Education

Karen Kim studied literature in college for four years. Now she’s trying to learn how to write computer code in 12 weeks.The El Segundo woman is a student at General Assembly, a computer-programming academy that promises high-paying jobs in the tech sector after three months of immersive training.“Every company is a tech company nowadays,” she said. “That’s part of the beauty of the programming world. There are just opportunities...